It is Love Fest Week for the SEC and ESPN. SEC Media Days featured Alabama Football and Mississippi State on Wednesday morning, with the four-day event concluding on Thursday. With eyes across the nation unable to avoid the attention being given to SEC football, there is predictable pushback.
According to ESPN Analytics, Alabama Football and 10 other SEC teams have tougher schedules than any Big Ten football team. Alabama's schedule is calculated as the SEC's 10th-toughest, which makes the Crimson Tide's schedule the nation's 10th-toughest.
The nine SEC teams calculated to have more difficult schedules than the Alabama Crimson Tide are, in order: Florida, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi State, Kentucky, Georgia, Texas A&M, and LSU, one spot lower than Alabama. After LSU, the first Big Ten team, Wisconsin, makes the toughest schedules list at No. 12. South Carolina, Auburn, Tennessee, and Ole Miss follow the Badgers in the top 16. The Missouri Tigers are not far behind at No. 20.
Fans of other Power Four conferences are whining, especially Big Ten fans. The B1G continues a long-standing complaint that the SEC must play nine conference games. Greg Sankey sticks with the SEC's counterargument to the Big Ten's complaint. "It is absolutely, fully, 100 percent correct that we play eight conference games while others play nine conference games. Never been a secret. It's also correct that last season all 16 members played at least nine games against what you would label 'power opponents.' We had several that played 10 against power opponents. The same will be true this year."
Alabama Football an SEC team with two Power opponents
Sankey also repeats what SEC coaches frequently state, that the SEC has more legitimate competition, top to bottom, than other conferences. Kirby Smart made a key point about adding a ninth SEC game and what would need to happen to the Playoff selection process: " I don't think we saw value in adding 9 more losses to our league last year, in terms of the way they picked the (Playoff) teams. If we are going to play a 9th game, we need the right people making the right decisions in terms of who goes in."
Strength of Schedule calculations are not meaningless in the preseason, but to gain much merit takes most of the season. Now, later, and always, other conferences will continue to whine about the SEC.